7 Executive Summary Executive Summary Data management is the exercise of guidance over the management of data assets and the performance of data functions. Data governance 1 refers to the overall management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data employed in an enterprise. A sound data governance program includes a governing body or council, a defined set of procedures, and a plan to execute those procedures. In practical terms, that means putting personnel, policies, procedures, and organizational structures in place to make data accurate, consistent, secure, and available to accomplish Federal Student Aid s mission. It takes on special importance because of Federal Student Aid s responsibilities and the legal requirements it must fulfill. Effective data governance makes Federal Student Aid more efficient by saving money, allowing re-use of data, and supporting enterprise analytics. However, data governance requires more than just a few members of the IT staff with a project plan. It requires participation and commitment of both IT and business management, as well as senior-level executive sponsorship and active consultation with education communities of interest. The data governance program enables Federal Student Aid to effectively manage data assets due to assigned responsibilities and rules of the engagement. At Federal Student Aid, data governance is planned, managed, and implemented through a threelevel structure: The Executive Data Governance Council (Executive Council) provides strategic direction, ensuring that data governance efforts address all relevant and mission-critical needs of the enterprise. It manages data governance as an integrated program rather than as a set of unconnected projects. The Strategic Data Governance Steering Committee (Strategic Committee) carries out plans and policies to implement guidance from the Executive Data Governance Council. It prioritizes data governance efforts and communicates with stakeholders, users, and other communities of interest. It identifies staff (data stewards) to oversee areas of data (data domains). The Tactical Data Governance Working Group (Tactical Group) implements plans and policies developed by the EDM Governance team, and analyzes and resolves any tactical problems that arise. Communication is very important for successful data governance. To succeed in a data governance program, management bodies and implementation team(s) must tell stakeholders (i.e., you, the readers of this document) what steps are being taken and why, must inform all relevant communities of interest about how data governance will benefit them, and must listen to stakeholders and communities of interest to incorporate their ideas and feedback into the data governance program. Input and feedback makes governance efforts more effective in achieving mission-critical goals and is vital for successful data governance. 1 1

8 Understanding Data Governance 1. Understanding Data Governance 1.1 What Data Governance Is Data governance is a component of data management that can be defined in several ways. The CIO Magazine says "Management is the decisions you make, governance is the structure for making them." One source 2 defines it as "Data governance refers to the organizational bodies, rules, decision rights, and accountabilities of people and information systems as they perform [data] information-related processes." Depending on their specific needs, different organizations will choose different management structures to implement data governance. It is less important to follow a particular organization chart than it is to ensure that data governance management makes data: Reliable Consistent Complete Easily available to those with a legitimate need for it Unavailable to those without a legitimate need or authorization for it These goals should guide Federal Student Aid in planning and managing its data governance program What Data Governance Isn t Understanding what data governance is not can help focus on what it is. In particular, data governance is not: Change management Data cleansing or extract, transform and load data (ETL) Data warehousing Database design Data governance applies to each of these disciplines but is not included in any of them. 1.2 Why Data Governance Is Needed Historically, data has been collected and managed at the level of individual departments for their own needs. Each department has developed procedures, data formats, and terminology that fit its unique situation and preferences. As long as there was no need to integrate or exchange the data, such inconsistencies were harmless. 2 Data Governance Institute, June

9 Understanding Data Governance Today, however, both mission goals and legal mandates require large organizations such as Federal Student Aid to report on their activities at the enterprise level. This means that such organizations need to: Migrate data from legacy systems into new systems and formats. Integrate and synchronize data from different systems that use different formats, field names, and data characteristics. Reconcile inconsistent or redundant terminology into a single data dictionary providing agreed upon definitions and properties for each data element. Report data in standard formats and with standard interpretations. Data governance makes it possible to fulfill those needs. As a component of data management, data governance provides and enforces enterprise-wide data standards, common vocabulary, reports, and the development and use of standardized data. It enables Federal Student Aid to more easily integrate, synchronize and consolidate data from different departments, exchange data with other organizations in a common format, and communicate effectively through shared terms and report formats. Figure 1: Data governance program structure. Federal Student Aid faces the classic challenges of enterprise-level data integration. Figure 1 shows the importance of the data governance program structure to meet these challenges. The benefits of data governance include enterprise standardization for data and systems, the ability to make use of merged data for additional knowledge discovery, and increased leverage when dealing with external data suppliers. 3

10 Understanding Data Governance Management as a program, not as a project The management of data across the enterprise relies on commonly agreed-upon data definitions. Data governance defines processes and procedures for reaching this goal. Federal Student Aid will manage data governance as a program rather than as a series of disconnected, one-off projects. Program management is a best practice for data governance. Program management differs fundamentally from project management. Project management focuses on the achievement of immediate tasks with specifically allocated resources and time. Program management, on the other hand, manages multiple related tasks, each of which makes its own contribution to overall strategic goals. Program management allows the data governance team to use work from earlier projects in later projects, avoid duplicated effort, and ensure that all the program s projects work smoothly together in support of desired strategic goals. In addition, data governance depends on management support. It demands the vision, leadership and cooperation at the top enterprise as well as the community level. The commitment of the leadership team is essential for the success of a data governance program. 4

13 Understanding Data Governance Measurable goals Measurable goals are essential to monitor the effectiveness of the data governance program, just as they are essential in other areas of management. Some authorities see measurable goals as part of the definition of data governance. For example, Jeanne Ross and Peter Weil of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say that governance should ensure decisions match company-wide objectives by establishing mechanisms for linking objectives to measurable goals. 3 Setting measurable goals is not enough: Federal Student Aid must choose the right goals to measure. Anything an organization measures will tend to improve sometimes, at the expense of other things that the organization does not measure. For example, if a manufacturing plant measures how many parts workers produce per minute but pays no attention to defects or worker attrition, it will get an increase in all three factors one of them desirable and two undesirable. Defining and using measurable goals requires applying the more general discipline of business performance management (BPM) to data governance. Figure 3 shows an outline of the process. Figure 3: Defining data governance goals and measuring their achievement. Two key steps can help identify the right goals to measure: 4 1. Identify and define value metrics linked to the goals of data governance, such as increased data reliability and consistency such as the number of approved standardized data elements in the XML Registry & Repository. 3 Quoted in Daniel Linstedt, Governing Governance, Teradata Magazine Online, 4 Defining Business Metrics That Matter: Improving Business Results. Chapin Consulting Group (www.chapinconsulting.com), Available from The Data Warehousing Institute (www.tdwi.org). 7

14 Understanding Data Governance 2. Identify and define additional analysis metrics linked to the processes of data governance and to possible negative side-effects of monitoring the value metrics. For instance, how many projects that create XML Schemas conform to standards. The EDM Team will develop scorecards and other tools to monitor performance in collaboration with the business owners and other stakeholders. Balanced scorecards, in particular, are useful to monitor the achievement of non-metric goals Planning Federal Student Aid will do data governance planning at three levels, with two additional levels providing input and support: The Executive Data Governance Council (Executive Council) sets the overall mission and strategic goals of data governance. It also obtains needed funding and resources. The Strategic Data Governance Steering Committee (Strategic Committee) develops the high-level task plan to achieve the strategic goals mandated by the Executive Council. The EDM Program Manager chairs the Strategic Committee. The Tactical Data Governance Working Group (Tactical Group) develops short-term goals and tasks to implement the high-level plan mandated by the Strategic Committee. To do so, it includes data stewards and subject matter experts as members. Business owners, users, project managers, and other stakeholders in Federal Student Aid and its affiliates provide ideas and feedback to the formal management organization for data governance. Section 2 of this document ( The Management of Data Governance ) provides more detail about these management groups Personnel EDM has functions dedicated to Data Governance, as well as the different management bodies described above. In accordance with Federal Student Aid s Concept of Operations (CONOPS) document 6, data standardization policies are approved and implemented by the CIO and must be followed. Table 1 summarizes the areas of responsibility. Sub-function Define Data Governance Process Description Design and implement a governance framework for defining a consistent view of all business-driven data elements. The governance framework should: Designate data stewardship responsibilities among both business and IT organizations. Define a virtual governance hierarchy with participation 5 See Williams and Williams, The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence, pp and Balanced Scorecard in Wikipedia, 6 Enterprise Data Management Concept of Operations Final, Federal Student Aid, January 25,

15 Understanding Data Governance Sub-function Implement Data Governance Process Create, Capture and Maintain Enterprise Metadata (Data Standardization) Develop and Implement Enterprise Metadata Architecture Description from business, IT operations and management. Define the roles and responsibilities of data stewards Establish a set of procedures used to define, review and approve data standards. Identify and coordinate data stewards. Establish and coordinate the Data Stewardship Council. Follow procedures to define, review and approve data standards. Create standardized definitions for data elements, attributes and schemas in an online registry. Capture and maintain enterprise shared metadata, including, but not limited to, naming standards, data classification, business rules, data models, data dictionary, data format standards, and descriptions of shared services. Enable the creation, storage, manipulation, control, integration, distribution, use and change management of enterprise-level shared metadata. Enterprise Metadata Architecture consists of: Create and maintain a metadata strategy. Inventory and integrate decentralized metadata tools. Define and execute change management procedures for enterprise metadata repositories and the XML registry. Create And Maintain Master Data Management (MDM) Standards Serve as the liaison among business owners to: Define authoritative sources of shared data entities. Build organization consensus for the logical data structures of shared data elements. Define and capture, as part of the enterprise metadata, the business rules that govern the creation and updates of shared data elements. Table 1: Data governance and metadata management sub-functions. The EDM Team will support the business units and participate in the Tactical Group and the Data Stewards will implement their directives in the data domains for which they are responsible. 9

16 Understanding Data Governance Expertise At the top level, members of the Executive Council (including the CIO) will provide global understanding of the needs and issues faced by Federal Student Aid. Members of the Strategic Committee will incorporate that global understanding into a slightly lower-level strategic plan for data governance in specific operational areas and departments. The EDM Data Governance and Metadata Manager, who chairs the Tactical Data Governance Working Group, will provide expertise to identify general issues of data governance that the effort needs to address, such as data standardization. This individual will also help identify the metadata that needs to be collected for data governance. Staff members who are experts in specific data domains in Federal Student Aid participate in the Tactical Group. These individuals know their data domains and the business processes that use their data. As such, they will identify how prospective changes in their data will affect business processes at Federal Student Aid. They will also assess and help to improve data quality in their areas, and will present recommendations for identified data quality issues Integration Tool Federal Student Aid is in the process of research and tool evaluation to acquire a tool suite supporting the overall data management effort. The tool set will cover data quality, data profiling, management of data assets such as data dictionary and data model inventory, as well as reporting on data Intranet Data Governance Site The EDM Team is in the process of updating the data portion of the EA intranet site to communicate data-related matters. The site will provide guidance, best practices, policies, and procedures related to data management for the communities of practice and communities of interest Willingness to change As with all new standards, senior management expects that all development efforts will support and comply with data governance efforts. Data governance is a service to the organization that will deliver higher data quality, as well as consistent data use across the organization and with business partners. It will enable Federal Student Aid to improve business analytics and thereby empower senior management in making educated business decisions. That being said, change even beneficial change is always uncomfortable. We all know how to do things the way we ve been doing them: for a long time, those old ways have seemed to be good enough. However, changes are required to make the Enterprise better. A slow, stepwise approach to change will help. Most important is the willingness of those involved both in data governance management and in its communities of interest to listen to each other and work collaboratively to achieve the best result for everyone. 10

17 Understanding Data Governance 1.3 Implementation of Data Governance 7 Data governance is a vital keystone in the process of building enterprise-wide data management. As such, it s one of the essential foundation pillars of the EDM. The EDM Team will work with business owners and senior management to introduce data governance to Federal Student Aid. The Team will work closely with stakeholders, whose feedback and comments (both positive and negative) will help improve policies and procedures to better serve the needs of Federal Student Aid. Data governance implementation includes various tasks, such as Master Data Management (MDM) and Data Stewardship. MDM supports the integration of Data Governance and Data Quality Control. Data governance management bodies will share responsibility for such tasks with EDM and the business owners Functional and Organizational Infrastructure Functional and organizational infrastructure will be created by establishing EDM as a function within Federal Student Aid. EDM is empowered to execute data management tasks and establish different support functions that they require. Data governance management will be structured as described in Section 2.1 of this document Technical Infrastructure Data Governance will support Federal Student Aid as it successfully and effectively deploys new technology and architectural principles such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Data Integration Services (DIS) and Enterprise Information Integration (EII). All of these principles (SOA, DIS, and EII) depend on high data quality and consistent use of information across the organization Policies and Procedures As data governance encompasses the people, processes and procedures to create a consistent, enterprise view of a Federal Student Aid's data in order to increase consistency and confidence in decision-making, decrease the risk of regulatory fines and improve data security, the data governance policy serves as the backbone of the data governance program. It supports any actions and insures that the governing of data is not optional. The Executive Council will communicate and approve the data governance policy Data Governance Policy Currently, the EDM Team is defining an enterprise data governance plan based on industry best practices. The policies are 8 : Participate in the enterprise data governance program: Business owners will participate in the enterprise data governance program and will represent relevant Business Capability Areas (BCAs) in the decision making process. 7This section draws on Robert S. Seiner's The Data Stewardship Approach to Data Governance Chapter Three: The Tools of Data Governance (The Data Administration Newsletter, 8 Task Draft Enterprise Data Management Data Policies Final; June 1,

18 Understanding Data Governance Assign enterprise data stewardship: Business owners will designate data stewards from their BCAs. The data stewards will have day-to-day responsibility for coordinating data governance activities Data Governance Procedures Data governance procedures are developed by the EDM Team and approved by the Executive Council. They are contained in these documents: 1) Data Standardization Policies and Procedures 2) Data Model Policies and Procedures, and Registration Standards 3) PESC Standards, Policies and Guidelines 4) PESC Guidelines for XML Architecture and Data Modeling The EDM Data Governance and Metadata Manager The EDM Metadata Manager manages a repository of information connecting each data steward with the data for which he or she is responsible. Conversely, it connects each group or category of data with the data steward(s) who oversee it. This kind of information is called metadata because it is data about the data. This information repository enables management, data steward coordinators, and stakeholders to identify and communicate quickly with data stewards. In addition, data domain stewards and operational data stewards can use the repository to reach data stewards in other business units of Federal Student Aid or the Department of Education The Metadata Repository As its name implies, the enterprise-wide Metadata Repository contains data about the organization s data. It might contain: Community agreed-upon information. Current-state information about data formats used by various systems and departments, as well as the terminology used by each department to describe the data. Target-state information about desired common data formats, data definitions, and methods for reconciling incompatible data sources The Data Quality Aspect of Data Governance Deciding and acquiring a data quality tool that can automatically check data sets to ensure that they meet the data quality standards set by the data governance team will be of great advantage to Federal Student Aid. The tool will support the EDM team in its efforts to ensure the availability, usability, integrity and security of the data employed at Federal Student Aid through a well-defined set of procedures and a means to execute those procedures. The tool will capture the results in a consistent electronic format allowing further analysis and sharing of the outcome with business owners for review and corrective action. 12

19 Understanding Data Governance The data quality tool can be an indispensable check on the validity, accuracy and compatibility of migrated data. It can catch errors that, further down the line, might be cost-prohibitive to correct The Data Quality Issue Log The Data Quality Issue Log enables data governance stakeholders to record problems or other issues that they find with data. Data stewards and data steward coordinators should review the log on a regular basis and should record the actions they take to resolve problems and issues they find in the log. They should also note whether problems or issues are local, affecting only one department, or strategic, affecting the entire Federal Student Aid data governance effort. Data stewards also use the Data Quality Issue Log for recording information about data quality problems, solutions, and results. The EDM Team monitors the Issues Log and addresses the issues as appropriate The Data Governance Activity Matrix The Data Governance Activity Matrix is a row-and-column table that correlates the organization s data with the roles and responsibilities of each member and group in the data governance management structure. It helps data governance management allocate tasks among different team members and working groups. Figure 4 shows a framework for such a matrix. IPM CPS COD CSB NSLDS FMS CIO Master Data - Organization x x x x x x x Master Data - Person x x x x x x x Master Data - Aid x x x x x x x ECDM - Business Owners sign off x x x x x x x Data Migration - IPM x Figure 4: A framework for a sample data governance activity matrix. 13

20 The Management of Data Governance 2.1 Overview 2.0 The Management of Data Governance Figure 5: Data governance management structure and information flow. Data governance is best conducted with a three-level management structure as shown in Figure 5: At the top level, the Executive Data Governance Council sets strategic goals and devises strategic plans to achieve them. At the second level, the Strategic Data Governance Steering Committee sets strategic goals and devises strategic plans to implement the goals and plans of the Executive Data Governance Council. At the third level, the data-steward members of the Tactical Data Governance Working Group implement the strategic plans of the Strategic Committee. 14

21 The Management of Data Governance Business and Stakeholder Involvement A common business adage states that marketing is everyone s business. Likewise, security agencies think that security is everyone s business and medical professionals think that health is everyone s business. Though all of these viewpoints are over-simplifications, they do contain a grain of truth. For any set of goals, some individuals or groups must bear primary responsibility for planning and achieving them: Tasks that are everyone s responsibility can easily end up being no one s responsibility. Nevertheless, in data governance as in marketing, security, and health the job cannot be done successfully by management acting alone. To maximize the success of Federal Student Aid s data governance program, management of the program should include representatives of both, IT and business units, as well as seeking input of both managers and users. At every level, the data governance team must seek the advice and the involvement of data governance stakeholders. This improves data governance because many new ideas come from those outside the formal management structure. It also encourages cooperation with the inevitable changes that data governance will require, whether they are changes in work processes or they are as simple as adapting to standard data formats and terminology Executive Data Governance Council The Executive Data Governance Council (Executive Council) includes the CIO and other senior executives. It sets the overall mission and strategic goals of the data governance effort, as well as securing the funding, resources, and cooperation needed to support that effort. Key to the Executive Council is its ability to make decisions on an enterprise perspective that is, on what is best for the organization as a whole instead of merely desirable for this or that subunit. In addition, the Council will be available to resolve strategic problems as they arise. If other levels of data governance management are unable to resolve such problems, each lower level will escalate the problem to the next level up, ultimately reaching the Council Strategic Data Governance Steering Committee The Strategic Data Governance Steering Committee (Strategic Committee) includes all the business owners, organizational leaders, IT representatives, enterprise architects, and the EDM Program Manager. The Strategic Committee develops a task sequencing-plan for the tactical working group and will be available to resolve problems escalated from lower levels of data governance management. It reports to the Executive Council, which serves in turn as a decision maker for escalated issues. The EDM Program Manager will chair the Strategic Committee. The EDM Data Governance and Metadata Manager will participate Tactical Data Governance Work Group The Tactical Data Governance Work Group (Tactical Group) provides tactical-level implementation of the policies and decisions from higher-level data governance management. It will also receive assignments and their priorities from the Strategic Committee. The Group will 15

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